Every single American and every person thinking of going to business school (and especially those in Business School) needs to see the documentary, Inside Job. This film is one of the most powerful, well-made and brave documentaries I have ever seen, and I have seen a heck of a lot of docs having been a programmer and documentary producer/director for the last two decades. I do not understand why this film is not being distributed widely, as it deserves a massive budget to promote it and the message it communicates so well. It needs to be shown to all high school students as a warning and should be required for all undergraduates who decide to study Economics, Business, Marketing, Women's Studies, Education... basically everyone should see it.
Because not understanding what has happened is already leading us to repeat our mistakes. Don't be fooled, those who created this depression, and we must call it what it is, are still in positions of power, and are still being paid huge sums of money to influence the economy, and worst of all, young people who are the future generations who will one day be running the businesses, economy, governments of the world.
The film is better than most thrillers and the bad guys and good guys (or in this case, an amazing woman) are so well defined and fascinating that you cannot stop watching for even a moment. The woman who should be a hero for all Americans, Brooksley Born, was the head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and one of the few people who stood up to those who took down our economy, namely Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin. Ms. Born told the truth when no one else would. She was undermined by both dangerous ideologies which stole her power to regulate derivatives, and the greed of Wall Street with its powerful lobbyists and supporters.
Another woman featured in the documentary is the French Finance Minister, Christine Lagarde, who also has been outspoken about the dysfunctional nature of what was going on in the so-called hallowed halls and wood paneled executive offices of the banks. If we had women such as these two, along with trustworthy people such as Elizabeth Warren, running the show, I would wager we would not be in the economic mess we are today.
But the most disturbing part of the film for me was that not only have most of the criminals who stole from the American people not gone to prison, they have been rewarded, but that their approach to business and profit-making is being taught in what are considered to be the best Business Schools in the United States.
I felt ashamed for our top Business Schools in America when I heard the professors from Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Northwestern, etc. demonstrate their complete ignorance as to how their teachings and philosophies (if you can call them that) helped lead to this disaster; they simply sounded arrogant and frankly stupid. They came across as out of touch and without a hint of understanding of their role in leading generations of students to buy into what is so obviously an immoral approach to participating in and running a world economy. In other words, not one of them seemed to think that perhaps they were wrong. Not one of them apologized, and in fact, they attempted to hide their ties to large corporations on whose boards they served, who financed their research and who paid them to write, publish and repeat precisely the things that supported the corruption and fraud which is ruining us.
This must stop and the people who are promoting this unsustainable, even criminal, way of running economies, corporations and people's lives should not be teaching future generations about how to do things when they have undermined and are destroying our country and destabilizing many countries around the world. Their greed, added to the lack of moral hazard, is leading to increases in poverty and hardship for billions of human beings.
We talk about war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but what is happening within our borders and being replicated in financial centers across the globe is highly toxic, and doing more damage than any war being conducted with missiles, bombs and soldiers. And for generations, students from around the world have wanted to come to the US to study at our Business Schools, yet now our very way of functioning is being questioned. How can we expect others to respect our academic institutions when they are bought and paid for by an unhealthy system?
I would argue this economic warfare has been going on for longer than most of us realize, but the soldiers at JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, the late Lehman Brothers, etc., have been fighting a dirty war they helped create. Some of them have fallen and now the even more concentrated power and wealth, which resulted as the number of their competitors dwindled, is continuing to spread and replicate a way of doing things which we already know will bring more hardship for the majority of the planet. The few rays of hope are in the Sustainable Business degrees and courses being taught in a few schools, but mostly the hope resides in those students who are questioning the status quo and demanding a more moral and just approach to Business and Economics.
Perhaps the goal was to centralize the power into fewer economic players so that they could more readily compete with the huge emerging market banks in China and elsewhere, and to go up against the oligarchs in Russia and India, but the fallout is that Democracy is at stake and our US banks are now playing by rules which have nothing to do with what America stands for, and, in fact, is destroying our foreign policy as other countries no longer trust us to do the right thing.
Just yesterday I was at a conference in Europe where the Future of Strategic Partnerships was being discussed, and the US was not being considered in the same way as it had in the past. This is primarily because of the way Wall Street hurt both the US economy and Europe, selling their own people, and other countries and their banks, pension funds, governments our bad loans. They are pretty angry at us for basically destabilizing even those economies which had been responsible, had savings, and whose people pay higher taxes in the US. In other words, the US contagion spread, and it has destroyed in some cases, our reputation so badly, that diplomatic, economic and even military partnerships are being affected.
I hope that some responsible business leader or a group of them will get together and make sure that the film Inside Job is shown near and on campuses across the country and around the world. The signs of hope really lie with these future generations questioning those who came before them. The problem is, most business students are in it for the money, not all, but many of them. But business can also be a noble endeavor. It can also be approached as a way to create a better world. I hope and pray that those in the film who are speaking up and do hold positions of power, will be able to help change things. But we need to take a hard look at what we are teaching our children.
What good is a Harvard MBA if one does not lead a life of integrity? We should teach our children to leave this planet better than it was when they arrived. And sadly, they are going to have a lot of hard work ahead of them to clean up our mess.
Follow Vivian Norris on Twitter: www.twitter.com/vivigive
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11321
Charlie Rose - Charles Ferguson
14 minutes into the interview, Mr. Ferguson discusses President Obama.
In the 90s, the wave of corporate anorexia took place when top executives discovered they could drive up the stock price in the short run by cost reductions based on elimination of many middle management positions. The executives saw the value of their own stock portfolio skyrocket as good people were tossed from their offices onto the street. We can thank some of our elite business school minds, the consultants they train, along with these executives for this blight on society.
These 'masterminds" forgot the basic lesson understood by Henry Ford, which was that mass production only mattered when you had a class of workers who were able to afford the mass-produced goods. Driving down the middle class eventually shuts down the mass market economy.
The obstacle to fundamental change in management theory and practice remains: it is the very precept (i.e. material self-interest maximization) underlying the economic system (see http://www.forprogressnotgrowth.com/econome)
People should organize groups of their friends and colleagues to go see the film together...I especially like the accounts of banker's Narcissism and excess as told by their therapist and the Madame who set them up with prostitutes...
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/26/chilean_economist_manfred_max_neef_on
Because the most powerful lobbyists are working to suppress the truth. The crimes of financial institutions are entangled with our government. Why would they want us to see this movie?
Michael Moore's movie "Sicko" was also suppressed because the health insurance industry and big pharma doesn't want the truth exposed - see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendell-potter/my-apologies-to-michael-m_b_786902.html
Does our government represent our people?
No.
Here's a video of representative Marcy Kaptur speaking with Dylan Ratigan - the focus of this video is on foreclosures, however she explains how much power the big financial institutions have in our government:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/40342863#40342863
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/25
Last Thoughts Before the Turkey Comes Calling | CommonDreams.org
"Friends,
As I head off for Thanksgiving, I wanted to share a final thought with you about this past week's news regarding the health care executives who sat around that table in Philadelphia four years ago and decided on a course of action to, if need be, "push Michael Moore off a cliff."
Having spent the week reading all their secret documents (and the book "Deadly Spin"), it's clear that there was something far more scary to these companies than me.
They were, in fact, scared of you. They were afraid YOU would end up pushing them over their own greedy cliff..."
It's only by our sheer masses that we have any power over any industry in this country, but our power is diminishing as many industries look to other countries for new business and consumerism.
As a graduate student in finance there are no classes on business ethics at all for me to take.
I can get a doctorate in any area of business without ever hearing of ethics or morals ever again even though my theories could influence millions of people.
That speaks volumes doesn't it?
http://www.torah.org/features/firstperson/ceo.html
A CEO Who Lives By What's Right - Torah.org
"In this anxious hour of pink-slip dread, it is restoring to think of Aaron Feuerstein, a Massachusetts manufacturer who prizes his employees and risks profits on their behalf.
"The CEO of Malden Mills, located in Lawrence, the 23rd poorest community in the country, stepped clear of the greedy stereotype of his kind in 1995 when, just before Christmas, his factory burned down. Rather than taking the insurance money and retiring or moving the plant to some Third World country, he promptly announced that he would rebuild. He gave bonuses to the help and paid them while they waited for the factory reopening..."
I sent Malden Mills a $ 25 donation, and was surprised when I got a personal letter from Mr. Feuerstein thanking me.
Another example is H. Ross Perot who personally led a rescue mission to free EDS employees being held in Iran.
I doubt very much that today's graduates will be any less careless with the funds and lives entrusted to them than most of their elders have been.
The fact is that even the threat of jail time is little compared to the possibility of earning a billion dollars -or more-in your lifetime.In the business schools I've visited Bernie Madoff elicits more curiosity into how he fleeced his investors than revulsion that he did it.
Thanks
I completely agree with this statement. The Whartons and HBS's of the MBA world are only giving lip service to the idea of ramping up business ethics in their curricula. The worldview of these schools is being taught to both men and women, which perpetuates the "winner take all" philosophy ingrained in their graduates. The B-schools don't have the incentive to change their programs because they're reaping too many alumni donations, and, after all, money talks.
I made comment on another post recently on a related topic: the traditional women's colleges should step into the void and create MBA programs that are more socially responsible in its viewpoint. While it would be better for all business schools to change their POV, it's highly unlikely.
Perhaps the true free market stance is to offer these types of programs, and let the educational marketplace sort out the winners and losers, rather than imply that all ought think as one...
Women have more sensibility and compassion.
Cheers
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/24-2
Firms See Long-Sought Goal in Sight: Major Pay Cuts | CommonDreams.org
"...These firms are systematically implementing a major strategy to permanently drive down wages far below anything considered "middle class." The key tool for corporations: forcing acceptance of permanent two-tier wage structures and the insertion of nonunion casual workers into union plants to drive down union pay to levels unimaginable a couple years back. Big business is essentially trying to take back the hard-won gains of working people won over generations.
[snip]
Expect the downward wage spiral to continue under relentless pressure from corporations who see an endless surplus army of labor with 9.6% unemployment and benefits running out for two million in December.
For example, "Toyota 's goal has become $12.64 an hour, the median wage for comparable manufacturing in Kentucky, where it has its largest plant, or $10.79 in Alabama, where it is building a new plant," reports UC-Berkeley Prof. Harley Shaiken, a long-time scholar on labor issues and the auto industry..."
Are business schools teaching the waging of class warfare ?